Twenty eight women took the stage in Berlin to present an innovative form of choral theatre. The Chorus of Women presented a collage of cultural texts: excerpts from the works of Sophocles Agamben, Barthes, Jelinek and Butler
The Chorus of Women addresses issues of contemporary stereotypes women face by tackling issues regarding femininity in pop-culture using colloquial speech, advertizing slogans, recipes, film quotes, fairy tales and more. The Chorus features only women, using their vocal talents to restore the repressed voices of their fellow women and bring to life social images of life in Poland to international audiences.
The show is directed by Marta Górnicka, who, since 2009, has been directing the Chorus of Women for the Zbigniew Raszewski Theatre and creating an auteur form of chorus theatre. Ms. Górnicka focuses on a modern tragic chorus that undermines linguistic clichés and thus reveals the idealogical dimension of language.
“The modern drama broke up with the chorus, thus depriving itself of a certain dimension of the tragic. We must restore the chorus to the stage and find new forms of its theatrical presence; we have to restore women to the chorus. The chorus of women will shout, whisper and sing. It will treat works as music. It will change language into voice, it will initiate its subversive force,” explains Ms. Górnicka, referencing her innovations in vocal theatre.
The “Chorus of Women: This is the Chorus Speaking” project started in 2009 with an open casting call for women of all ages, regardless of their theatrical or vocal experience and twenty-eight women were selected out of 130 candidates. The project has received rave reviews in Poland and was deemed one of the ten most interesting events from the cultural programme of the Polish EU Presidency by the Gazeta Wyborcza daily .
The German website nachtcritic.de wrote in April 2011:
Marta Górnicka’s “Chorus of Women” is a true discovery and probably a turning point or Polish theatre. 25 different women of different ages and backgrounds speak in chorus, first about good recipes and good men, and then this wonderful choral voice takes on images of women in consumer society, forced acts aimed at achieving these ideals of beauty and doubting them. […] The last word – metoikas – refers to Antigone and her treatment as an alien deprived of her rights in her own country. A truly strong and thrilling spectacle.
Project participants include:
Maniucha Bikont, Justyna Chaberek, Finka Heynemann, Alicja Herod, Anna Jagłowska, Marta Jasińska, Katarzyna Jaźnicka, Ewa Kossak, Katarzyna Lalik, Aleksandra Krzaklewska, Aleksandra Matryba, Kamila Michalska, Paulina Pacia, Marta Ponichter, Anna Rusiecka, Monika Sadkowska, Karolina Szulejewska, Anna Stachowicz, Kaja Stępkowska, Olga Szymula and Iwona Tołbińska.
Marta Górnicka graduated from the Theatre Director’s Department at the Aleksander Zelwerowicz State Theatre Academy in Warsaw. As well, she graduated from the Frydryk Chopin Music Academy in Warsaw and studied at the University of Warsaw and the State Theatre School in Kraków. Besides various theatrical and musical collaborations in Poland, Górnicka has also taken part in master classes and given workshops in directing in Salzburg, Rome and London.
The show was staged in Kiev on the 3rd and 4th of September, in Tokyo on the 3rd to 6th of October and wrapped up its world tour in Berlin at the Hebbel am Ufer Theatre in November 2011.
Date: 23rd - 25th of November 2011
Venue: Hebbel Am Ufer – Hau 3, Tempelhofem Ufer 10, Berlin
Organised by: Zbigniew Raszewski Theatre Institute, Hebbel Am Ufer
Project is cofinanced by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland.